The New Mork Times | RONALD REAGAN famously said, -weroughtawaron povertyand poverty THC. is snow Lage counted as poor, it’s tempting to think he may have been right. Look a little deeper and the temptation grows. The lowest percentage in ge 1) poverty since we started counting waste pereenei197g) The rate climbed as S, 0! high asugazpereenvinag8s. In 2000, after a spurt of prosperity, it went back AW apmilliommare peopleare poor today? down to wagipercent, and yet ‘At the same time, wehave done'a lot that works. From Social Security to etuts mid food stamps to the earned-income tax credit and on and on, we have enacted No! oye programs that now keep 4o million people out of poverty. Poverty would be Ginvect WV nearly double what it is now without these measures, according to the Center (fect on Budget and Policy Priorities. To say that “poverty won” is like saying the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts failed because there is still pollution. With all of that, why have we not achieved more? Four reasons¥/An \\)\y) woe . . Plus, many more AYE at households are Headed now by a single parent; making it difficult for them to SYoy earn alliving income from the jobs that are typically available. The tiear ced Wy © disappearance of cash assistance for low-in ildren —ic., Sa welfare — in much of the country plays a contributing role, too. And persistent er poverty among minorities and families ‘issues of race and gender mean high headed by single mothers. Wi) har with mytyes apts aytmescom/20120729pinion sunday why cantne ? ‘ev milligfS. '0w-income spectrum we have a different problem. Thesafety net for single int wa, syears. ‘This is a major cause of the dramatic increase in extreme poverty during 025 those years. The census tells us that BOF WMVGW peopleearnincomesibelony chalfthe:poverty line, less'thanraboursoj500 forafamilyofthree,— up eight WS fatpaww aytimes com/201210729.pinionsundaywhy-cant-ne end. poverty in-america inl? r=sirens Why Can't We End Poverty in America? - NYTimes com million from 2000. we {ot Why? A substantial reason is the near"demise of welfare— now called ———— for Needy Families, or TANF. In the mid-gosmoresthan . But that number has us — cr the past decade and a half to roughly 27percent. One result: ae aie stamps provide an income at a third of the poverty linepelose:to$6,300 a “fora*fimilyof threealt’s hard to understand how they survive. } 0 Atleast we have food stamps. They have been apowerful antirecession’ 4 wie “too! inthe past five years with the number of recipients isingtom6millionr fedlacedl 3 pho By contrast, welfare has done little tolcounter /()/€ . wi e \. a although the number of people receiving cash 1085 is * many states actually assistance! creduced the size of their rolls and lowered benefits to those in greatest need. ‘Race and gender play-an enormous part in determining poverty’s ntnorits . Reanbinnniig eourse? Minorities are disproportionately poor: around @7=percent ow 2 ofsAfrican=Americans, Hatinos aid American Indians are poor, versus.10, ‘eperventof whites. Wealth disparities are even wider. At the same time, cea nolo constitute the largest number among the poor. This is a fact that bears S40 se ( ‘- emphasis, Danan puaieliees ( q «more whites than minorities. But we cannot ignore race and gender, both becauséthey present particularchallengesiand because so much of the politics grounded in those i eanunmnaniaee? of poverty xy_ We know what we need o do rosss auinonnaaieaiiaisesiaaenaaalhosaiie a decent safety net, andthe like But realistically the immediate challenge is oe oe oo SX teeving what we have, Representative Paul Ryan and his ideological peers SS would slash everything from Social Security to Medicare and on through the wv list, afid Would hand out more tax breaks to the people at the top. Robin Hood would turn over in his grave. We should not kid ourselves. It isn’t certain that things will stay as good as they are now. The wealth and income of the top 1 percent grows at the expense Intp2ww nytimes com/20120772Siopinion/ sunday hy can-we-endpoveryin-americabii? =Ihive of everyone else. Money breeds power and power breeds more money. Itis a ae mn ‘truly vicious circle: r A surefire politics of change would necessarily involve getting people in XQ the middle — from the 3oth to the 7oth percentile — to see thei i SPY Selftinterest. If they vote in their own self-interest, they'll elect people who are ol Hc Y Y likely to be more aligned with people with lower incomes as well as with them. As long as people in the middle identify more with people on the top than with those on the bottom, we are doomed. The obscene amount of money flowing into the electoral process makes things harder yet. But history shows that people power wins sometimes. That's what gh happened in the Progressive Era a century ago and in the Great Depression as yuquel I AN \,_ Welle The gross inequality of those times produced an amalgam of popular, ator S we ‘unrest, organization, muckraking journalism and political leadership that 02! We ‘ _attacked the big — and worsening — structural problem of economic By “inequality. The civil rights movement changed the course of history and spread Q' into the women’s movement, the environmental movement and, later, the gay rights movement. Could we have said on the day before the dawn of each that it would happen, let alone succeed? Did Rosa Parks know? We have the ingredients. For one thing, the demographics of the pple electorate are changing. The consequences of that are hardly automatic, but 2 i AY’ they create an opportunity. The new generation of young people — unnsually JO 9¢ we 6 distrustful of encrusted power in all institutions and, as a consequence, wy Auf vi ‘tending toward libertarianism — is ripe for a new politics of honesty.Lower=> i oo ‘income people will participate ifthere are candidates who speak to their of 1 S\ cf situations: The change has to €ome from the bottom-up and from synergistic LOWU#"U leadership that draws it outsWhen people decide they have had enough and there are candidates who stand for what they want, they will vote accordingly. Ihave seen days of promise and days of darkness andveseen them pte Xs more than once. All history is like that i Sy a v Peter Edelman is a professor of law at Georgetown University and the author,